


breathe easy

by wintercelestial



Category: Shall We Date?: Obey Me!
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27316069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintercelestial/pseuds/wintercelestial
Summary: Lucifer's sick. Diavolo's in charge of his recovery.
Relationships: Diavolo/Lucifer (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 136





	breathe easy

**Author's Note:**

> written for a prompt!! happy birthday to diavolo.

Lucifer sneezes.

Diavolo pauses in his seat at the council table, right in the middle of leaning in for a sneaky kiss after a long meeting. 

“Lucifer, you’re sick,” he gasps, eyes wide with immediate concern.

“I am _not_.” 

Lucifer sniffs and his nose makes an odd noise. That sneeze would have gone undiscovered if Diavolo just left instead of trying to start a makeout session in the empty meeting room. 

“You _are_.” Diavolo reaches out with a hand to touch Lucifer’s forehead and gets held away at arm’s length. “You just sneezed,” he insists, deep frown lines appearing in his forehead. “I think you should go home and rest. Don’t come to class tomorrow either.”

The door swings open and Barbatos pokes his head in. “My lord, are you ready to leave y-”

“Lucifer’s sick,” Diavolo wails, waving his arms emphatically. 

Lucifer glowers at him. 

It was _one_ sneeze. Yes, he’d been holding it in all day at the cost of monumental effort and willpower, but being sick’s only a minor inconvenience that pales in comparison to the other minor inconveniences that call themselves his brothers.

“I need everything in my schedule tomorrow to be cancelled immediately,” Diavolo orders. He slams his hands down on the table, making all the stationery on it jump. “I’m taking the day off to look after Lucifer.”

“Please do not,” Lucifer mutters under his breath.

Barbatos furrows a brow at his liege. “I’m afraid I have to deny your request, my lord. You have a full day tomorrow, starting with the witches’ council meeting at half past eight that you already postponed twice so you could have breakfast with Lucifer.”

Diavolo’s face falls. He shrinks down in his seat, looking pleadingly to his vice president to back him up. Lucifer is conveniently tidying his paperwork. 

“If Lucifer is unwell, it wouldn’t do for you to catch his cold,” Barbatos adds placatingly. “If you were also to fall sick you wouldn’t be able to take care of him at all, and of what use would that be?”

Today Lucifer thanks Barbatos’s tongue of silver, thanks that he always knows all the right things to say. They exchange a fleeting but knowing glance as Lucifer leaves the council room first, a slight nod of acknowledgement at the royal butler as he passes by. The sooner he’s gone, the fewer opportunities Diavolo will have to draw his most powerful weapon against him: a pout.

The flight home to the House of Lamentation isn’t particularly eventful. Lucifer stops to get a box of tissues and makes sure his bedroom door is securely shut before he blows his nose loudly and without abandon. It feels amazing after a whole day of hiding his symptoms, but now his head’s heavy with blocked sinuses and a short power nap sounds ironically divine.

He strips off his uniform, lies down on the bed and accidentally passes out until the next morning.

—

“Breakfast’s ready!” someone hollers down the hallway, and Lucifer awakes with a groggy start. 

“I’ll be down later,” he croaks in a raspy voice. “Don’t wait on me.”

It’s a lie at best. Lucifer barely has half an appetite; his head feels like Cerberus stepped on it multiple times overnight and he doubts he’ll be able to taste anything anyway. He’s yanking tissues out of the box when his D.D.D chimes with a text, still somewhere in his uniform pocket from yesterday. 

_Good morning Lucifer!!! How’s your cold?_ There’s a row of smiley face emojis blowing a kiss at him. 

_How’s your meeting?_ Lucifer types back with as much sarcasm as he can fit into three words. Halfway through putting his uniform on he sneezes, and again when brushing his teeth. He blows his dripping nose, wipes the toothpaste-spattered mirror and contemplates setting fire to the demon who had infected him with this blasted cold.

_I’m heading out. See you in Devildom History._

Lucifer opens the door and nearly walks straight into the enormous box sitting on the ground outside his room, labelled with his name on one side and wrapped flamboyantly with a red and gold bow. “What the...”

Upon closer inspection, he finds a note taped to the top of the box. 

_Lucifer, I said NO CLASSES :(_

Lucifer bristles at the thought of his actions being so predictable, so easy to read that Diavolo can pinpoint his every move without even trying. He scoffs and peels off the sticky note with every intention to crush it in his hand.

There’s another one underneath it. 

_Please stay at home. Love._

“The audacity...” 

Lucifer’s gaze flickers down the hallway and once sure nobody’s in the vicinity, he lugs the box into his room. It’s rather heavy and it’s no wonder; the bow comes off and he peers inside, lifting up various things to reveal a fat stack of RAD budget reports. 

_I know you’ll want to do work anyway so here’s some,_ the sticky note attached to the pile says.

Lucifer can’t help but let a wry smile tug at his lips, and then he’s off yanking tissues out of a tissue box to blow his nose again. 

He digs through the rest of the box to find medications for the cold he told Diavolo he didn’t have, a decongestant spray that he’s most definitely not sticking up his nose (how unsophisticated) and some sort of lemon and honey drink from the human realm. There’s a hot water bottle in there too; Diavolo must think he’s dying.

Perhaps it’s better for his sanity’s sake that he relaxes by working from home today, despite it being far from his norm. Class material can easily be caught up on for a demon of his intelligence but if any of his brothers were to catch his cold, it would only double his workload. 

Lucifer puts some quiet music on and sits down at his desk with his box of tissues. 

—

Soup. A giant pot of it, sitting on the stove being warmed when Lucifer skulks down to the kitchen for lunch, labelled with his name in the excruciatingly large letters of Diavolo’s handwriting. 

He immediately rips off the piece of paper and shoves it in his pocket, stalking over to the fridge for his own food instead. He opens the door to find the shelves bare and spotless.

“Ugh.”

His nose also decides to inconveniently unblock itself and the aroma of the rich soup floods his senses, feeling like a warm hug that he didn’t ask for. It smells like spiced chicken and a dash of poisonous herbs; a Barbatos specialty if he ever saw one.

Lucifer shuts the empty fridge with a sigh and defeatedly scoops himself a bowl of soup, sneaking back to his room to eat in secrecy. His phone dings again as he lifts the first spoonful to his lips, scowling down at the device for interrupting his grumbling stomach.

 _So have you tried Barbatos’s soup yet?_ :D

Despite his (now blocked again) nose and almost non-functional tastebuds, it’s delicious. There’s just enough pepper to make his sinuses unclog and after a few more enthusiastic mouthfuls, he already feels ten times better. He only remembers to return Diavolo’s text when his spoon clatters in the bottom of the bowl

 _It’s not bad_.

It seems to have a profound effect. Every single morning there’s a different pot of soup waiting on the stove for him, all of them painstakingly labelled with his name. Mammon dares to snicker after pot number three and Lucifer threatens to cough on him.

There’s also a different box outside his door for him to trip over every morning. One day it contains his favourite office stationery and some more paperwork, the next it’s snacks and treats from Madam Devian’s, but on the day after that Lucifer specifically checks the floor first and gets greeted by a pair of shoes.

He looks up the long legs and red uniform, winces a little at the glowing smile and nearly gets taken out by a container thrust at his face. “What the-”

“I baked them,” Diavolo announces, grinning proudly from ear to ear. “Get-well-soon muffins!” 

Lucifer squints through the plastic container and counts four of them. They’re a little bit on the ugly side of things, slightly warped and icing misshapen, but they sure look better than the rolled cigar cookies he once attempted to make.

“Oh,” he says, as his cheeks turn pink with embarrassment, “this isn’t necessary…”

He gestures vaguely at all the boxes of things stored along the wall of his room. “None of this was... but thank you all the same, I suppose.” 

He holds out his hands expectantly when Diavolo suddenly pulls the container away, up and out of his reach. He leans forward despite Lucifer’s scowl and his eyes sparkle with their usual mischief. 

“I’ll give them to you for one kiss,” he says with a wink, and Lucifer sniffs in disapproval through the last of his blocked nose. 

“Absolutely not, you can’t afford to be ill. Wait until I’ve at least fully recovered.” 

He’d almost said yes without shame, but Diavolo can keep his damn muffins.

Diavolo cocks his head at him innocently, strands of red hair falling over his eyes. “But you’ve _almost_ recovered, haven’t you?”

“Ah, my lord, there you are.” Barbatos rounds the corner in time to interrupt Lucifer’s predicament, and fortunately so. “Now, what did i say about staying away from Lucifer? Please come now, or you’ll be late for lunch.”

Diavolo shoves the container of muffins into Lucifer’s hands before Barbatos drags him away down the hall, much to Lucifer’s satisfaction. One muffin’s now squished against the lid from all the jostling around. Definitely ugly. 

The container lives on the corner of his desk for an entire hour before he finally gives in and eats one, mostly so that he’ll have an answer when Diavolo asks about them later. They taste like chocolate and, if it had a flavour, undying love.

He polishes off the last of his paperwork for the week, and polishes off the last of Barbatos’s soup of the day as his dinner. It’s not as filling as it had been when his cold was worse, so he serves himself the last of the muffins as a late-night dessert. 

“Lucifer,” a voice whispers on the other side of the door, and he chokes.

“What are you doing here?” he coughs. 

“Sneaking out,” comes the sheepish reply. “Please let me in before Barbatos finds me.” 

Lucifer hurriedly clears shis desk and brushes all the crumbs from his clothes before getting the door. His hand pauses on the knob, mind thinking. 

“I will if you don’t stop me from attending classes and duties tomorrow,” he says, and the defeated grumble outside tells him he’s free to do as he pleases.

He opens the door just a crack and Diavolo barges inside, ready to fling his arms around him. Lucifer ducks out of the way.

“But I missed you,” Diavolo whines, folding his arms petulantly, bottom lip upturned. It’s been two whole days. Or maybe four. “Didn’t you miss me?”

“Barbatos,” Lucifer reminds him sternly, and Diavolo slinks away to sit in the office chair like a reprimanded child. 

“Can I at least stay the night?”

Lucifer opens his mouth and Diavolo interrupts by pointing at the empty container still sitting on the desk. 

“You ate them,” he says in an awed voice, as if he can’t believe his eyes. “Did you like them?”

“I gave them to Beel,” Lucifer says nonchalantly, shutting the door. 

Diavolo blinks at him, then at the desk, and back at him again. “Then what’s that on your face?” he asks, grinning wolfishly.

Lucifer glares at him as he swipes a thumb across his lips and cheek, glancing down at his hand to gauge exactly how much he’s got smeared across his face. 

To his surprise, his fingers are clean. 

“There’s nothing on my face,” he says, confused.

“I know. But you’d only check if you _really_ ate my muffins.” Diavolo props his chin up in one hand, elbow on the desk, and beams at him. “So, were they good?”

Lucifer really considers calling Barbatos at this point, but he just doesn’t have the heart to turn that smile upside down. Besides, it would only become a pout and then he’d be powerless to resist. 

“They were fine,” he says grudgingly, waving a dismissive hand. “You can stay if you must, but I’m only permitting it because I’ve almost recovered.”

Diavolo’s probably already wearing his pajamas under his RAD uniform anyway. 

The unbuckling of a belt and the soft sound of heavy clothes hitting the floor confirms he’s indeed right.

All his paperwork’s done, it’s getting late and they’re both tired. Diavolo wheedles Lucifer into going to bed with him, fluffing the pillows and tucking him in before sliding under the blankets for cuddles.

“Lucifer,” he whispers again, this time in the dark, warm and snug as a bug. Lucifer stirs briefly, curled up against the expanse of his chest. 

“...What.”

“Can I have my kiss now?”

Lucifer gives him his stupid kiss. 

\--

“A… ACHOO!” 

The explosive sound wakes Lucifer up the next morning. He swears the bed’s still wobbling from the aftermath as he rolls over, coming face to face with Diavolo hovering over him with an extremely contrite expression.

“Oh doe,” he says, voice small and eyes round as dinner plates. “Lucifer, I thick I’b sick.”


End file.
